1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a paper sheet processing apparatus for unbinding a bundle consisting of paper sheets such as securities, and automatically performing predetermined processing such as inspection of the paper sheets one by one.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a conventional paper sheet processing apparatus of this type, those described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,586,232 to Ohumura et al. granted on May 6, 1986, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,722,443 to Maruyama et al. granted on Feb. 2, 1988 are known. In such apparatuses, articles to be examined, e.g., bank notes are sequentially taken out one by one, and their authenticity and fit/unfit states are examined. This apparatus normally receives not separate bank notes but a bundle of a predetermined number of bank notes bundled by a band. For example, a sheaf of 100 bank notes is bound by a strap, and a bundle is obtained by bundling 10 sheaves of bank notes by a band. The bundle is unbound, and 10 sheaves each bonded by a strap are manually inserted in the apparatus.
In the apparatus, the straps are cut to sequentially take out bank notes. Thereafter, the bank notes are sorted, based on an inspection result from an inspection device, into fit notes, unfit notes, and rejectable notes, which cannot be identified. The rejectable notes are stocked together with the cut straps.
The conventional apparatus requires several manual operations in a series of processing steps starting from bundles to rejectable note processing for bank notes requiring re-inspection through inspection processing. For this reason, a large number of bank notes cannot be quickly processed.
More specifically, in the conventional apparatus, the band of the bundle must be removed, and 10 sheaves must be inserted first. Upon completion of insertion, data on the strap of rejectable notes which cannot be inspected must be input, and the number of rejectable notes must be manually counted and input. Therefore, an operator is required to perform cumbersome manual operations. In addition, he cannot operate the inspection device body while a rejectable note processor processes rejectable notes. Therefore, the work efficiency of the apparatus may be decreased. When the rejectable note processor malfunctions, the inspection device body must be stopped. As a result, the work efficiency and processing power of the apparatus are considerably decreased. In this apparatus, since the inspection device and the rejectable note processing apparatus are arranged to have one-to-one correspondence, if the number of notes to be rejected is small, a working efficiency of the rejectable note processor is decreased, and the total function of the entire apparatus cannot be fully exhibited.